I see that TD is expanding its Saint John call centre. 100 new jobs. Frank McKenna is vice chair of TD and this is paying off it would seem.
I would prefer a 200 person hedge fund back office. I would have preferred a CanWest eastern Canada hub when he was chair of that organization.
Certainly the TD jobs are welcome.
But we do have to get beyond call centres.
It’s actually kind of fun. If you look at Nova Scotia’s industry attraction press releases, they proudly state the average wage rates of the jobs (for most projects anyway). In New Brunswick, announcing the hourly or annual wages of the jobs created has gone the way of the DoDo bird.
There was a time that this seemed to matter. Jobs paying at the lower end of the scale don’t pay much tax in New Brunswick and therefore are suspect contributors to the goal of self sufficiency. We need jobs at the $50k level and higher to contribute to tax revenue in a serious way to the provincial coffers.